Smell the Roses - an art journal page

Hola! Hope you are well. Weekend is just around the corner, yeayy! I'll be traveling up north this week. Gonna bring my camera with me and hopefully I'm able to take interesting pictures while I'm there.

Today, I would like to share with you an art journal page entitled ' Smell the Roses'. This page will remind me to stop and just smell the roses. Breathe in the air deeply, pause a lil' longer and notice the tiny little things around me.

I have used a number of techniques here. As usual I prep my page with gesso. Normally, I don't plan my page in detail. Sometime or most of the time, I would just sit on my chair, look around me especially my paints and start thinking on which colours I would like to use for the page. Then, the inspirations will start to build up slowly. From nothing, I'm building up colours, layers and will begin to see how I would like the page to end up finally. Next time, I'll try to put forward an inspiration first before I start one; like a lot of others I see are doing. In the end, it's all really up to you and which way you are more comfortable with.

Techniques and supplies:

1) firstly, gesso the page. Then I painted the page in pastel green using Martha Stewart paint. Wait till dry.

2) then add on patterned and corrugated papers and the tulle. I have also used Prima's canvas resist - the birds.

3) next, Webster's pages story teller alpha stickers. -play, rest, eat and smell the roses. Those are the words I used for this page. The word roses was laid on top of WP's fabric ribbons.

4) then, the twill. 3 lengths of twill arranged on the page. I wrote " stop and do smell the roses " on them too..

5) next, I have mixed Martha Stewart paint in blue pastel with Jo Sonjas texture paste and applied it onto a brick stencil on 2 corners. Wait till dry

6) next, I have used Versamagic Turquoise Gem dewdrop (teardrop?) chalk ink like the one below and applied it flat onto the page to create a pattern.

7) when dried, i applied Martha Stewart white texture paste, which is very coarse on the in-between of the dew drops. ( and quite everywhere else....hehe)

8) and won't be complete without me writing something on my page...I have written few similar words around the dew drops..

9) the butterfly with matching tone

10) and finally, the page tag/ label with safety pin secured to the ring binder

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great weekend folks! TTFN!